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In spite of the growing shopping mall culture in the country, more and more net savvy Indians are now shifting towards online shopping. And if comScore report is to be believed then there is exceptional rise in the numbers of online retail visitors in India this year. Latest comScore data figures that nearly 60 per cent of online users in India visited a retail site in November 2011 and the number of online shoppers increasing 18 per cent in the last year. Coupons, consumer electronics and comparison sites are the top three most popular sites in India with coupon sites witnessing a growth of 629% during November 2010 to November 2011.

Speaking about rapid growth of online in India comScore, Kedar Gavane, comScore director for India said,“ The online channel is playing an increasingly important role in connecting retailers with potential customers in India. The rapid growth of online coupon sites suggests that consumers in India are looking for deals, highlighting the need for online retailers to adopt effective marketing and pricing strategies for their goods” .

Top ten online retail site(November 2011)

Total unique visitors(000)

% Reach

Total Internet visitors

46,390

100

Retail sites

27,171

58.6

Amazon sites

6,805

14.7

Apple.com

6,805

7.4

Flipkart.com

2,675

5.8

Homeshop.com

2,286

4.9

Naaptol.com

2,145

4.6

Myntra.com

2,110

4.5

Priceindia.in

2,047

4.4

Alibaba.com

1,973

4.3

Bookmyshow.com

2,125

4.6

Samsung Group

2,759

5.9

Online Shoppers climbs 18 percent

In November, 27.2 million online users in India, aged 15 and older, accessed the retail category from a home or work computer, an increase of 18% from the previous year, as consumers continue to turn to the web to shop for and purchase items and retailers continue to increase their online visibility through active marketing campaigns.

Analysis of some of the largest retail sub-categories revealed that coupons were the largest with 7.6 million visitors, an increase of 629% from the previous year as consumers rapidly adopt daily deal sites be. Consumer electronics ranked next with 7.1 million visitors growing 12% from the previous year, while 5.8 million online users visited comparison shopping sites, an increase of 25% from the previous year. Snapdeal.com led the category with 5.2 million visitors, followed by Mydala.com with 1.4 million visitors and Crazeal.com with nearly 1 million visitors, the report said.

Amazon and Apple sites led as the top retail destination in India reaching 6.8 million visitors, representing 14.7 percent of the online population. However, other Indian retail destinations are fast catching up with growing numbers of visitors- Flipkart.com (2.7 million visitors), HomeShop18.com (2.3 million visitors) and Naaptol.com (2.1 million visitors).

Note: Visitors, excludes visits from public computers such as internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs

Snapdeal.com and Mydala.com tops the coupons category

According to the report on visitation to the top retail and coupon sites in India, coupon sites are rapidly gaining in popularity, with 16.5% of the Indian online population visiting the category in November, led by Snapdeal.com and Mydala.com.

At the same time future of online in India seems to be bright as Indian government plans to invest Rs20,000 crore to build a national fibre optic network as part of its National Broadband Plan, which will provide a further fillip to the growth of Internet usage in the country. It is expected that the number of unique Internet users in India will grow five times to reach 376 million by 2015.

i think the social shopping space is still untapped here in india. and the next wave of growth will be in this space with websites like thisnext, kaboodle etc doin really well in the western markets.

AK

The pace by which e venture is growing is undoubtedly phenomenal and I am sure that numbers will increase by leaps & bounds in very short span. But to me I see lot of gap between footfall and sale maturity. Few are only looking for footfalls and some are seriously working to do just anything for a purchase/client. These numbers also includes visitors from tier II & III or for that matter also from tier IV cities, who goes empty handed as there are hardly any player having reach in such cities. There is a lot of buying capacity there but yet to be exploited due to non presence of a good logistic support and network. Also, there is a huge un-fulfilled metro consumption to be quenched first. I see tremendous scope in ventures beside ones being promoted cause of easy handling and procurement.